The odds are too good. Washington does realize that this move will lower its chances of winning any fiery Bakken surprise prizes to zero, but it’s willing to forgo the suspense. Too much quid, so little quo. The Bakken Bosses — it’s an industry AND state enterprise — as in “Are you talking to me?” or “Ich spreche kein Deutsch.” It depends. …
An interesting little item buried on Page 4 of a long April 30 North Dakota Industrial Commission meeting agenda read: “Overview of Oil and Gas Development in western North Dakota along the Little Missouri River.” (approx. 3:30 pm) Piqued my curiosity, so I went. What I learned is that I should have been paying more attention to some things my …
A couple of months ago, I wrote about an oil well pad at the top of the Van Hook boat ramp on Lake Sakakawea. I’ve learned a few things about it since then. First, the basics. There’s a little blue-collar resort community at the top of the Van Hook Arm of Lake Sakakawea, a couple of hundred trailers and cabins …
WARNING: In this article, I’m going to rip some North Dakota politicians a new one. This isn’t personal, and it isn’t partisan. They’ve got it coming because of malfeasance in office. I’m not going to pull any punches. They deserve it. I know I’ve been pretty critical of some of our state’s leaders lately. Sorry. But we’ve got some really …
Well, it looks like Jason Halek (pictured above) is finally going to the pokey. Remember Jason? He’s the fellow who dumped more than 800,000 gallons of salty, oilfield wastewater into an abandoned oil well southwest of Dickinson in Stark County, North Dakota, and then attempted to cover it up. And his partner in crime, Nathan Garber, might be sitting in …
I think I’m just going to rerun this column from the Unheralded.Fish website from two years ago about this time of the year in every odd-numbered year from now on. Nothing seems to change. Why should I spend a bunch of time writing something new? Nobody seems to be paying any attention anyway. JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — …
Pipelines leak. If North Dakota didn’t have such an awful reputation for not enforcing its environmental regulations in the Oil Patch, maybe we wouldn’t have a few thousand people camped out along the Cannonball River protesting the mother of all North Dakota pipelines, Dakota Access. Pipelines have been leaking oil and dangerous fracking saltwater all over western North Dakota for …
We return now to an old, familiar story, a story of some really bad guys doing some really bad things to the North Dakota environment (or enviornment, as the Bismarck Tribune spells it in really big headlines on the front page today — have you ever seen a worse newspaper?), getting caught by state “regulators,” then given a slap on …
The first decision of Wayne Stenehjem’s soon-to-be-officially announced campaign for North Dakota Governor comes today, when the three-person Industrial Commission, of which he is a member, decides to give the Oil Industry a big wet kiss on the lips or a tiny slap on the hands. At issue is whether the commission will stick to its guns and enforce its …
So, the North Dakota Farmers Union held a big rally Friday on the Capitol steps to kick off the petition drive to refer North Dakota Senate Bill 2351, which would exempt dairies and hog farms from our anti-corporation farming laws. It’s nice to see the spunk coming from the NDFU. I hope their referral effort is successful. It’s got a little …
During last year’s campaign for and against Measure 5, the Clean Water, Wildlife and Parks amendment to the North Dakota Constitution, opponents of the amendment used as one of their sticking points the fact that there is already an Outdoor Heritage Fund in state government and it will provide $30 million this biennium for the same kind of projects the …